


Delineate

by Ruby Prism (rubyprism)



Category: Loveless
Genre: Gen, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-13
Updated: 2010-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 05:25:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyprism/pseuds/Ruby%20Prism





	Delineate

Wrong. Clumsy. Wrong. He sloped his brush across a too-sharp line and winced as the black paint spread wide, turning a brilliant orange patch to splotchy grey. Wrong, _worse_, inaccurate, asymmetrical, unsightly.

"Agatsuma-san, those are beautiful."

"They're wrong." He dabbed at the paper with a tissue, trying to stop the spreading, leaking stain before it overtook the whole wing.

"Wrong how?" pressed his classmate. "Your style makes them come out so beautiful."

"It's not my style," Soubi said; "they're just wrong." He'd been using watercolours to try to hide the inevitable errors in what should be a soft wash of abstraction; but his lines were instead too sharp, except when he added too much water and the whole picture smeared together, hue and brightness in the wrong place altogether, a blur that suggested pale grey-gold went _here_ and not _there_, when Soubi knew very well that _Curetis bulis_ didn't look like that.

"They don't have to look perfect, you know."

Soubi responded with a cold stare.

"Well, I like them."

"I don't," muttered Soubi, eyeing the reclaimed paper and wondering whether to dare reapply the orange on the dampened patch. Would it blend enough if he let it dry again?

"You should appreciate your own work more. Who told you to be such a perfectionist, anyway?"

Soubi swiped his arm across the table between them, knocking palettes and tubes to the floor, splashing cups of bright water on the stained wood. "Shut up before I give you a ruined painting yourself."

From then on, Soubi's classmates avoided him.


End file.
